Health Care Reform Is About Opening Your Eyes

The light posting this week has been because I’ve been in Washington DC, where thousands with the group Health Care for America Now gathered yesterday outside the Capitol to show, why yes, yes there is popular support – and popular demand – for achieving quality, affordable health care for all now.  It was a busy day of lobbying members of Congress, rallying in the hot Swampland sun, and hearing stories from people across the country who are being battered and crushed by a health care system that costs too much, doesn’t provide the quality we deserve and leaves too many behind – both the uninsured and underinsured.  We keep finding reasons to close our eyes to the injustice and inequality that happens around us every day.  It’s time to open them.

To answer that, I want to go to an event the night before.  In Freedom Plaza, a number of organizations that focus on health care reform more broadly, women and children, communities of color, and people of faith came together under the banner of the Healthcare Equality Project.  They rallied at an event called "Lighting the Night to Eliminate Healthcare Disparities."  These groups argues that health care can’t just be about handing everyone an insurance card and hoping for the best.  It has to be about providing quality health care for all – it's about providing access for those who are already struggling and already marginalized;  it’s about recognizing that all are not equal in our health care system now, and that the poor and those of different racial groups are not reaping the benefits of the most expensive health care system of the world;  and it’s about pointing out that little things have a huge effect – that no child should have to translate to a doctor for a sick parent or a sick grandparent, and that a clump of cancer cells or an infectious disease doesn’t care where you’re from, who your ancestors were, or whether you can afford to buy COBRA when you lose your job.

The speaker who drove this home for me Eleanor Hinton Hoytt of the Black Women’s Health Imperative:

“Let me ask you to close your eyes just for a moment and, with me, imagine:  Imagine you’re a woman with two jobs trying to feed your children, clothe your children and put a roof over your head.  And every year, as you get closer to the year your mother died of breast cancer, or creep closer to the year your aunt died of heart disease, or watch your best friend from high school struggle with diabetes, you begin to wonder if you will be next…

“In this country where we tell people if they work hard, they can have the American dream, if they work hard, they can achieve a great life for themselves and for their families – how, please tell me, is it possible that Americans every day have to make those impossible choices about feeding their families or going to the doctor?

“Now open your eyes – you don’t have to imagine this, because this woman could be you, or the one next to you, or someone you know.  Your neighbor, your mother, your sister, your daughter, your friend.  This woman is one of 47 million Americans who this country is failing.”

This has nothing to do with whether Max Baucus can continue being buddies with Chuck Grassley.  It has nothing to do with the scores of legislation coming out the Congressional Budget Office and whether we’re willing to spend a trillion dollars over 10 years to bend the curve of our costs so we’re not spending $4 trillion per year as soon as eight years from now.  It has nothing to do with whether our benefits should be taxed or not.  And it has nothing to do with protecting the private insurance industry from competition.

It’s time to open our eyes – fighting for health care reform is about all of us.

(Photo credit:  me.)